


Paws and Reassess

by blackkat



Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Animal Transformation, Fairy Tale Elements, Fix-It, Fluff, Friendship, Humor, M/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2020-06-20
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:28:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24822373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackkat/pseuds/blackkat
Summary: While on a training mission, Wolffe picks up a sorry, scrappy stray cat and smuggles it back to Kamino with him.(Jon Antilles has the worst luck of any Jedi, and that's saying something. But maybe this particular bout of terrible luck has a clone-shaped silver lining. And potentially a lot of Sith-shaped complications. Opposable thumbs would probably make this whole thing a hell of a lot easier to deal with.)
Relationships: Jon Antilles/CC-3636 | Wolffe
Comments: 62
Kudos: 849





	Paws and Reassess

**Author's Note:**

> The title is the fault of everyone in my discord server, because I asked them to stop me and they didn't. Therefore I am morally no longer liable for the terrible pun.

This, Jon thinks with resignation, is not the outcome he was hoping for on this mission.

Carefully, scrabbling with unfamiliar claws, he hauls himself up to the top of a moss-covered log and stands there for a moment, trying to reorient himself. The whole forest looks huge from this angle, almost unsettlingly so, and the smell of rain and moss and _wet_ is strong enough to make him wrinkle his nose. It’s loud, too, and he sits down, a little disgruntled by the sheer press of noise that makes unfamiliar instincts rise.

Jon is good at self-control, though, and getting turned into a cat isn't about to change that. He quashes the urge to lunge for a bird that flutters down close to him, pins his stare on the glint of gold among the ferns below him, and flattens his ears to his skull, wholly displeased.

The Sith artefact, perfectly innocent and innocuous, shines briefly in the light before it dims again, the power fading from it.

Fay definitely didn’t mention _this_ being a side effect of the blasted thing.

Tail flicking with annoyance, Jon leaps down, takes a moment to find his balance on all four paws, and then straightens. Carefully, he reaches out and bats quickly at the thing, one swift jab, but it doesn’t activate; whatever power it had is apparently spent now, or Jon as a cat can't activate it the way Jon as a Human could. He growls softly at it, then hooks a claw in one of the decorative golden loops and does his best to drag it back towards a hollow under the log where the ground has been carved away. It’s awkward. It’s _aggravating._ Jon knows plenty of species without opposable thumbs, but he’s _used_ to them, and suddenly being without isn't something he’s ever trained for.

There isn't, reasonably, all that much he can do to hide the thing now that he’s gotten it out of the Sith temple and thoroughly activated whatever trap was on it. If there was ever a way to keep it from turning on, he never saw it, and what’s done is done. He’s a cat, and he’s on a tiny planet well past the Rishi Maze, with only Fay aware of where he ended up.

She’ll probably notice, eventually, that Jon hasn’t commed her about the artefact, and since she’s the one who sent him, she’ll feel obligated to come looking for him. She, of all people, will be able to figure out some way to reverse the thing’s sorcery, and Jon simply has to wait for her to get within range.

Of course, that leaves him in the middle of a temperate rainforest, on an uninhabited planet, as a _cat_ , for an unknown length of time. Normally, Jon wouldn’t even think of worrying, because the predators here aren’t any sort of risk for a Jedi, but—

Cat. He’s a _cat_. He’s less than two feet tall and he has a _tail_ and he really, _really_ wants to chase the native creature that goes scurrying through the bushes, even though intellectually Jon knows it has poisoned spurs and that’s a bad idea.

Miserably, annoyed, Jon leaps back to the top of the log and hunkers down there, glaring balefully at the ruins of the ancient Sith temple. At the very least, he thinks, it can't get—

With a hissing patter, rain sheets down through the treetops, and Jon _yowls_.

Wolffe freezes, hands stilling on the pegs of the tent were he’s trying to force them into the sodden ground. “Did you hear that?” he demands, lifting his head.

Across from him, his own tent suffering in the downpour, Cody glances up, squinting through the rain. “No,” he says, grumpy, but Wolffe ignores that; Cody's been grumpy since they left Kamino and that blond clone he’s started strangling with the apron strings. Wolffe isn't entirely sure what Cody's little shadow did to deserve Cody, but it must have been terrible.

“Well, _I_ did,” Wolffe tells him, and rises to his feet, halfheartedly dragging the cover over the tent where it’s slumped on the ground. He peers into the surrounding trees, but the rain is so thick it’s almost impossible to see the river they're camped next to, let alone anything further in. Towering ferns block all other possible lines of sight, too, but Wolffe is absolutely sure this is where the sound came from.

“I heard it, too,” Gree says, and a moment later his boots approach Wolffe’s back, quiet on the soft ground. He’s carrying his vibroblade out and ready, and Wolffe puts a hand on his own, wishing futilely for the familiar weight of a blaster. They're meant to be learning survival skills, though, and their instructor for this test, Micho Cing, was a little more gleeful about taking their weapons when they landed than Wolffe thinks is entirely appropriate. She had passed out vibroblades, handed out tents, and then told them cheerfully that she’d be back in two weeks to collect whoever remained.

Wolffe wants to do well just to spite her, which probably isn't the best response to one of their commanding officers, but it sure as hell is motivating.

There's a beleaguered sigh, put-upon and annoyed, and Cody joins them at the edge of the trees, expression unimpressed as he stares out into the gloom. “Heard _what_?” he asks. “There are animals here, are you sure it wasn’t one of them?”

Wolffe’s seen holos of animals before, saw the reports on this planet’s wildlife before they shipped out and knows it exists, but he has no idea what they're supposed to sound like. When he glances at Gree, Gree seems equally uncertain, and he just gives Wolffe a shrug in response.

Well. If they're about to get eaten, Wolffe wants to _know_. Sitting on his heels waiting for some hungry carnivore to leap out of the bushes isn't exactly his idea of a good time.

“Why don’t you stay with the camp while we check it out?” he tells Cody, and takes a step forward.

Cody's hand on his arm pulls him back. “No,” Cody says, and there's an edge of authority in his voice that makes Wolffe’s eyes narrow. “We need to stick together. Micho was clear on that.”

Grudgingly, Wolffe will admit that she was. There weren’t a lot of instructions as far as surviving the planet went, just a goal they need to make it to and a handful of vague outlines of potential dangers they might encounter, but—sticking together was something she was very, very pointed about including in the briefing.

“Fine,” Wolffe says curtly, and pushes forward before Cody can stop him again, ducking beneath a spray of ferns streaming rainwater and wishing for his helmet lights. No helmets on this mission though. No armor at all, and Wolffe _knows_ it’s meant to make them feel vulnerable, exposed, at risk.

That doesn’t change the fact that it’s working.

This section of the forest is at least more open than some of them; there are huge trees here, at least five meters across, that soar skyward, but that leaves all the other trees thin and scraggly, opens up the forest floor. Tall ferns and moss turn everything a verdant green, carpeting the ground right up to the edges of the river. Wolffe doesn’t mind it as much as he could, even if it makes the stones poking above the surface of the river treacherous to cross. Colt spent the week leading up to this trip telling them horror stories about Jango taking his first batch of clones to a desert somewhere, with almost no water, freezing temperatures at night, and sandstorms that almost killed parts of their batches. Given that Wolffe was expecting Micho to subject them to something similar, this is almost pleasant by comparison.

He definitely heard something, though.

“This way?” Gree murmurs, landing lightly on the far bank. The clatter of the rain against his gear is loud enough to make Wolffe wince, but there's no changing things, so he nods and pushes past him, leaving him to wait for Cody. Thinks longingly, for a moment, of Ponds, who got a squad with Grey and Stone, and is probably not having any problems managing either of them, regardless of what he intends to do. It’s just Wolffe’s luck that he got stuck with _Cody_.

In the gloom of the rain and the setting sun, it’s hard to make out much of anything. Wolffe squints through the dim forest as he makes his careful way amongst the trees, and—

Shapes. Not organic, even if they're covered by moss and heavily weathered. Wolffe comes to a sharp halt, alarm rising in tandem with interest, because this planet is supposed to be entirely uninhabited. Not just uninhabited _now_ , but _always_ uninhabited.

This is clearly a ruin, though, without doubt or hesitation.

“Wolffe?” Gree asks, concerned, and Wolffe gestures him forward, then points.

“Looks like it used to be a building,” he says, and Gree's eyes widen.

“A building?” Cody echoes, concerned. He comes to a halt on Wolffe’s other side, frowning as his eyes scan the long, low lines of scattered stone blocks. There's a tree growing right out of the center of where it probably used to stand, smaller than the surrounding trees but still clearly old, and Wolffe can only vaguely make out the cornerstones of the place. It wasn’t large, but there's enough stone that it was probably fairly tall, and they're standing on what looks like an old walkway, overgrown with moss and grass.

“Definitely a building,” Gree confirms, and he looks interested more than wary. “There aren’t supposed to have been any people living here. The planet’s close enough to Kamino that _someone_ would know if there was.”

Wolffe snorts. “Or they _told_ us the place was uninhabited,” he says, not willing to forget that this is a training mission, and Micho is a Mandalorian who wouldn’t hesitate to dump them into a combat situation practically unarmed, in the name of making them better.

With a grimace that’s all agreement, Cody tips his head. “This is where the sound was coming from?” he asks.

“It wasn’t very loud by the time it reached us,” Gree says, as Wolffe nods. “Part of the structure is still left. Maybe it came from in there?”

_Part_ seems generous; there's one section that still has a roof, practically sprawled over the massive, tangled roots of the tree. It looks like a stairwell, though, completely dark and leading downward, and Wolffe trades skeptical glances with Cody.

“Give it some space,” is Cody's verdict. “There are animals around here. Seems like a good place for one to set up a nest.”

“Yes, sir,” Gree says, amused, but he follows Wolffe forward, right in step with him as they skirt some of the bigger blocks. “This place must have been beautiful once. Look at those arches.”

Wolffe looks, if only to scan them for potential threats. “We haven’t seen anything else,” he says, “and we’ve been down here for two days already. Who drops one building in the middle of a rainforest and leaves it?”

“Maybe the other buildings were made out of wood,” Gree says, and pauses, crouching down by a block that sits at an angle. “They wouldn’t last long in this climate.”

Wolffe spares a glance at what’s caught his interest, but it’s nothing immediately dangerous. Just the edge of a statue, half-crushed by the rest of the stone, unrecognizable in shape. Dismissing it, he turns away, scanning the woods around them and trying not to let the steady drip of the rain get on his nerves. There's—

A fern rustles.

Instantly, Wolffe falls back, grabbing Gree by the scruff and hauling him to his feet. “Cody,” he snaps, and Cody spins, putting his back to them as Wolffe practically collides with him, braced and ready.

“Something?” Cody asks tightly, and the vibroblade in his hand gleams in the low light.

“Bushes were moving,” Wolffe says curtly, and draws his own, keeping it by his leg as he scans the edge of the ruin. “I saw—”

“There!” Gree says sharply, and Wolffe turns his head just in time to catch it, a dark streak against the surrounding shadows, fast-moving and gone in an instant. Low to the ground, Wolffe thinks, and tries to remember if there were any animals mentioned in the briefing that like to hunt in packs.

“Kriff,” he mutters, and turns, scanning the edges of the trees again. His skin is prickling, something dark and wary crawling down his spine, and he _hates_ this. Give him a dreadnought any day, or a city; being out in an abandoned place, in the middle of the wilderness, is more unsettling than any number of attack simulations in a bombed-out city.

“Language,” Cody says, almost absently, as he scans the ruin itself. Wolffe rolls his eyes hard, not willing to put up with that from _Cody_ , golden boy of Alpha-17’s class, and—

A loud crash rings through the air, sudden enough to make Wolffe startle. He whips around, feels Cody match him as Gree falls back to cover their rear, and mutters a curse. There's nothing visible, nothing obvious; the sound came from deeper into the ruin, and there's no sign of motion among the tumbled rocks.

“Odds that we’re about to get our faces eaten off?” Cody mutters, and Wolffe snorts.

“Decent,” Gree says, amused and resigned in equal measure. “Isn't this how most horror holos start?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Cody says. “How can you even watch them? They're all terrible.”

“They're entertaining,” Gree counters. “And no one ever wants to watch the documentaries—”

“Gee, I wonder why.”

“Both of you shut the hell up,” Wolffe says, and determinedly starts forward, leaving them to catch up. The looping roots arch high enough that he barely has to duck to get under them, and he keeps a wary eye on the top of the blocks, not about to let them be jumped from above. The ruins back here are less scattered, more complete; they’re very obviously a building, squared-off and looming. A spire still rises skyward, spilling ferns and saplings, and there's a wide, open stairway leading down into the earth that’s blocked by tumbled stones.

By _freshly_ tumbled stones. Wolffe stops short, heartbeat rising in pace, and feels prickles of alarm spread down his spine. It’s clear that the stones were _just_ moved; they're free of moss on one side, only just now starting to be streaked by the rain, and—that’s a hell of a lot of stone. Whatever moved it _has_ to be something large and forceful. If it decides to come after them, they're going to be lunch before they can even get back to camp.

A bush with trailing leaves rustles, flowers swaying. Woffe wrenches around towards it—

And feels the ground give way beneath his feet.

From behind him, a distance away, there's a yowl, strange and alarming. Wolffe grabs for something solid, _anything_ solid, but with a crash and a clatter whatever he was standing on collapses entirely, and he falls. There's a dizzying rush of darkness, impact as he rolls down a steep slope, another gut-wrenching drop, and a breathless, fractured moment later Wolffe hits the ground on his side, entirely winded. A rain of mud follows, and he throws up a hand to shield his face, trying to catch his breath. No rain hits him, and when he gathers himself enough to roll over and looks up, there's no light from the surface, no indication of how far he’s fallen or where he is. Just darkness, faintly red-tinged.

Muttering a curse, Wolffe levers himself up to sitting, wiping at his forehead. There's a long cut that’s bleeding freely, a collection of spots that are probably going to be bruises very shortly, and a low-level ache all up and down his sides. He’s still holding onto his vibroblade, but there's nothing obvious to use it on, and Wolffe shoves it into its sheath and rises, head spinning faintly. He has to catch himself on the wall, and it’s stone, stone covered with a thick layer of moss and rivulets of water. Clearly there's some connection to the surface, if only enough for the groundwater to get through.

“Great,” Wolffe says viciously, because if _he’s_ the reason their team is late to the pickup zone, Cody will never let it go. Worse yet, Gree will be _disappointed_ , and Wolffe would rather stab himself in the foot than deal with that. He takes a wary step—

Red light flickers, _flares_. In a sweep, crystals set into the walls come to life, sending red brilliance sheeting across the room. Wolffe jerks back automatically, but there's no other reaction. Just that eerie light in the half-collapsed room, shining like rivulets of blood on the water trickling down the walls.

After a long moment, Wolffe straightens, takes another step forward. This time, nothing changes, and he lets out a rough breath, forcing his fists to unclench. “Charming,” he mutters, and eyes the closest crystal. It looks like kyber, but as far as he’s aware, kyber doesn’t _come_ in red, and it’s creepy as hell.

Still. It’s light when there wasn’t any before, and Wolffe can see the spot he fell through, high above. The slant of the wall looks like the product of a landslide, and the hole he punched through is too high to reach by climbing, especially on a surface that unstable. He considers it for a long moment, already resigned to having to find another way, and then blows out a breath running a hand over his hair and flicking some mud away. He must be far down, since he can't hear Cody or Gree, and that means—

A scrape, loud and wrenching in the silence.

Wolffe jerks around, alarm catapulting his heart right into his throat, and freezes solid. There are eyes, _glowing_ eyes, sheened red in the darkness, in a patch of shadow the crystals’ light doesn’t touch. They're fixed on him, watching, unblinking, and Wolffe wrenches his vibroblade from its sheath and levels it at the threat.

The eyes blink. There's a breathless pause as Wolffe stares back, and then a shift. The creature uncoils from the shadow, coming into the light, and—

It’s a _cat_. An _ugly_ cat, skinny and lanky and all limbs and tail, so thin and bony it would probably disappear if it stood at just the right angle. Both ears are tattered, and its tail is visibly crooked, and its dark coat is scattered with white lines where the fur grows in the wrong direction, like it grew back wrong. Just a cat, Wolffe thinks, and takes a breath, then shifts back, sliding his blade away.

“You're a little asshole,” he accuses, entirely displeased to have been startled so thoroughly by a damned cat. “What the hell are you doing down here?”

The cat gives him a supremely unimpressed look, then opens its mouth.

A horrible croaking sound emerges. Exactly what dragged Wolffe out of their nice, safe camp and into the soggy forest, looking for threats.

For a long moment, Wolffe stares, at a loss for words. Then, with a vicious curse, he stalks towards the cat, ready to strangle it. “ _You_. You little bastard, I'm going to—”

The cat skitters back, ears flattening to its skull as it shoves itself into the corner. It’s pressed low to the ground, lanky limbs gathered up until it’s almost flat to the ground, arched back the only obvious line of it. Its tail is bristling, too, but it’s not lashing, the cat frozen like it’s trying to disappear into the shadows.

Something kicks in Wolffe’s chest, and he comes to a halt, grimacing. That’s not even an aggressive stance, that’s _defensive_. The cat’s acting like Wolffe is about to kick it, and maybe Wolffe _wants_ to, kind of, for scaring him, but that hardly means he _would_.

“Oh, knock it off,” he says grumpily, and crouches down where he is, several feet from the creature. “I'm not going to hurt you. Looks like someone already did that, anyway.”

For a long moment, the cat just stares at him, still bristling defensively. Then, slowly, its ears unfold, and it lifts its head a little. Sniffs the air, and Wolffe holds perfectly still, letting it assess.

Then, abruptly, it uncoils, sits down primly, and starts cleaning its paw as if nothing ever happened.

Wolffe rolls his eyes, though he can't resist the faint smile that pulls at his mouth. “Little bastard,” he says, but the cat doesn’t react. “You're the culprit, huh? But if you got down here, that means there's a way out, right?”

The cat lifts its head, lowering its paw, and stares at Wolffe for a long moment, those glowing eyes faintly unnerving. Then, deliberately, it gives another croaky, strangled meow, leaps to its feet, and bounds into a section of deep shadow along the half-collapsed wall.

Blinking, Wolffe pushes to his feet, but the cat doesn’t reappear. He frowns, reaching out, and instead of wet stone his fingers brush empty space.

Something brushes his legs, and Wolffe jerks back, looking down. Undeterred, the cat follows, rubbing its lanky body against his shins with aggressive force, and then it turns and bounds into the darkness again, slipping through the cracked archway that leads out of the room.

“Well, that’s clear enough,” Wolffe mutters, and takes a breath to steel himself, then steps into the darkness.

Instantly, red light flickers to life, more crystals flaring along the walls of the tunnel. Wolffe pauses, a little startled, and looks down at the little black cat sitting in the middle of the hallway, lanternlike eyes turned on him expectantly.

“Going to show me the way out, bastard?” he asks, and the cat croaks agreeably at him. It rises, slipping over to wind around his legs for another second before it’s gone again, trotting down the hallway and vanishing beneath a tumble of thick ferns.

Wolffe has no idea how smart cats are supposed to be. The most he’s encountered of them are holos, or overheard conversations by the trainers, and neither of those are all that reliable when it comes to hard facts. It’s possible that this is something all cats do, and Wolffe just got lucky. Even if he didn’t, the cat probably knows enough about this place that it will lead him out eventually when it gets bored, and Wolffe can work with that.

He follows the cat.

The next two hallways have crystals that come to life as soon as he sets foot in them, and the cat waits in the middle of the corridor until Wolffe catches up, then slips away into the gloom. Wolffe doesn’t hesitate to trail after it, even as he tries to calculate where he is in relation to the surface. Out of the main section of the ruins, probably; these hallways run straight, and they're long enough to make him sure that he’s well into the forest by now. But they're leading upward, if faintly, and—

Stairs, moss-covered, and the cat is sitting on the third one up, crooked tail spilling over the edge like it tried to wrap it around its paws but couldn’t quite manage, given the bent tip.

“Well, given that this is your fault, this seems like the least you could do,” Wolffe tells it, but the cat just blinks at him. For a moment, Wolffe stares back, and then he sighs and reaches out, offering the cat his fingertips. It eyes him for a moment, like it can't believe he’s expecting it to do something so demeaning, and instead of sniffing his fingers it turns away and start to vigorously clean its bony ribs.

With a roll of his eyes, Wolffe reaches out, grabbing it around the ribs and picking it up. He half-expects to get clawed, but instead the cat gives an indignant croak and goes limp in his hold, dangling like overcooked noodles. It turns a baleful look on him, but Wolffe snorts, unimpressed, and tucks it under one arm, making a halfhearted attempt to gather all of its various dangling limbs that it doesn’t help with at all. Eventually, Wolffe just gives up, hitching it up against his chest with an arm beneath it, similar to the way he’d hold a newly-decanted baby.

“Don’t make this easy or anything,” he bitches, and the cat croaks at him, then scrabbles up until it can get its back paws in the bend of his arm, the top half of its body draped over his shoulder. It seems content to stay there, so Wolffe leaves it be, making his way up the stairs. There's light at the top, and Wolffe steps over wide rivulets of water, pushes through ferns, and is utterly relieved to find the entrance completely unblocked. Completely uncovered, too, and Wolffe mutters a curse as he’s assaulted by the deluge again the moment he emerges. Raising a hand to shield his eyes, he glances around, and it only takes a moment to spot the ruins of the main building, the figures in rain gear at the base of it.

“Cody!” he calls. “Gree!”

There's a jerk, and then Gree vaults off the edge of the building, running towards him. Cody is right behind him, knife out, and Wolffe rolls his eyes, even though he can't help a faint smile.

“Wolffe,” Gree says, relieved, and grabs his shoulder. “Are you all right?”

“We couldn’t get down where you fell,” Cody says, and that’s his worried face, sharply unhappy. “I was going to get rappelling gear—” He stops short, blinking, and then says with disbelief, “What the heck is _that_?”

Wolffe snorts, plucking the cat from his chest, and holds it up under the arms, letting it dangle. “Our monster,” he says dryly, and the cat meows, aggrieved. It paws at him, and Wolffe rolls his eyes but lets it drop to the ground, where it promptly loses its noodle state and reforms into a lanky, skinny cat. Shaking itself vigorously, it twists through Wolffe’s legs, looking up at him with wide eyes that are an unnervingly pale blue in the light, and gives another croaky meow.

“Oh,” Gree says, bemused, and crouches down, offering it his hand. It gives his hand a perfunctory sniff, then sits down on Wolffe’s left boot, apparently satisfied with that.

“A _cat_?” Cody says, annoyed. “You dragged us all the way out here and gave us both heart attacks for one ugly _cat_?” He leans down, grabbing—

With a hiss, the cat swipes at him, and Cody recoils with a yelp, clutching his hand. The cat promptly eels through Wolffe’s legs and hunkers down behind him, tail bristling, watching Cody like he’s the enemy.

“What are you talking about?” Wolffe asks, smirking. “It’s gorgeous. I love it.” Mostly to rub it in Cody's face, he leans down and scoops the cat up again, hitching it up on his shoulder, and there's a scrabble of claws on his rain gear before his hood jerks. The cat slithers inside of it, kicking and squirming, and nearly chokes Wolffe until he quickly undoes the top strap. With that extra bit of room, the cat curls around his neck, paws braced on either side of his coat, crooked tail hanging down his shoulder, and croaks again.

“There we go, sweetheart,” Wolffe says vindictively, and pats its head. The cat huffs a little grumble that’s almost a growl, but it drops its head on its paws, tail twitching.

“Wolffe, it’s probably got _diseases_ ,” Cody says. “Get rid of it, _now_.”

“Get karked,” Wolffe says, and pulls his hood forward a little more. “You're just jealous because it likes me more.”

“We’re on a _mission_ ,” Cody says, outraged.

“And the cat got me out of that place in plenty of time for us to make it to the drop point,” Wolffe says, and turns towards the camp. “Let’s finish setting up. We’ve got six hours before we need to move.”

“ _Vod_ ,” Gree says, all weary amusement as he falls in on Wolffe’s other side. “Maybe the cat should stay here.”

“It can stay if it wants,” Wolffe says dismissively. Their camp isn't far from the ruins. The cat can find its way back if it wants to. “I'm not putting a collar on it or anything.”

The cat gives a croaky meow, like it’s protesting the very idea.

Gree sighs. “Well, you’d better not let it follow you all the way to the drop site,” he says. “Jango's going to be there. I don’t think he’ll take it well if you try to bring the local wildlife back to the facility. Kamino’s big on the whole sterile thing.”

“I'm _not_ ,” Wolffe says, annoyed, and puts a hand up, nudging the bony hindquarters stuffed under his hood. “What do cats even _eat_?”

“Not rations,” Cody says judgmentally, still nursing his hand. It’s bleeding. Wolffe is not entirely put out by this fact, _or_ the fact that he was allowed to manhandle the cat without any sort of protest.

As if to spite Cody in particular, the cat ends up eating two whole ration bars while Wolffe finishes setting up his tent, and when he pulls himself into the narrow space, the cat follows him agreeably, hunkering down at the edge of his bedroll. The last thing Wolffe sees as he drifts off to sleep is wide blue eyes, trained on the darkness outside, like the cat is keeping watch.

He sleeps well, and doesn’t wake until Gree rouses him the next morning when it’s time to get moving.


End file.
